Getting By With Less: Economic Strategies of Lower Income Households in Guadalajara1

Abstract

Lower income people in Mexican cities have developed a wide variety of household level economic adaptive strategies. Such strategies help them get by with less by providing opportunities to earn income; by saving on the costs of goods and services; and by cutting costs within households. Most of these household level economic adaptive strategies are undertaken by women. Based upon data from Guadalajara, Mexico's second largest city, this paper shows how skillfully lower income people manipulate minimal economic resources. The paper also demonstrates that housewives have an important role in the economic strategies of lower income households, a role that is often unrecognized and unanalyzed. In many Latin American cities, rural-urban migration and high birth rates have fueled the rapid population growth and physical expansion of these urban areas. Guadalajara, the second most populous metropolis in Mexico after Mexico City, is no exception. During the 1970s, this city had an annual population increase of nearly 8%, almost 5% of which was the result of rural migration (Walton 1978:38). By the census year of 1980, it is predicted that Guadalajara will have a population of 2.5 million (Unikel 1975:404). Already the city has expanded so much in size that it has absorbed into its urban sphere the small towns which lay in its path of growth (Diaz 1966:219). The physical and demographic growth of Guadalajara is most clearly shown by the scores of fraccionamientos (privately developed residential

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